Savage closed his eyes. There it was. The one thing he’d been dreading all along.
Savage couldn’t sit still. He was out of his chair and pacing the length of the room, right in front of that wall of glass showing the wild, turbulent waves crashing just in their view. That matched his heart. The pounding of the blood rushing through his veins. Not hot. Cold as ice.
It all really came down to this moment. His life. Survive or die. Czar hadn’t been talking to Seychelle. He’d been talking to Savage. If he wanted this woman, if he really wanted to share his life with her, he had to share all of him with her. At the same time, Czar warned him not to let her in so far that if she knew too much and she didn’t accept him, she wouldn’t live through it. Walking that fine line was hell.
From the beginning, Savage had told himself he’d be all in. He’d give Seychelle 100 percent. Devote himself to her happiness, and he’d meant it. He had.
But this … Telling her the truth of who he was. The things he’d done. Give her those things and expect her to look at him with love and not revulsion … no. Already he had confessed to her that he needed sadistic sexual practices. He had to see her in pain in order to be sexually aroused. That was bad enough to have to admit to, but the rest of it, telling her how he’d become such a monster and then going on to give her even more of his fucked-up life. He’d have to admit to his many kills—so many—and the way he turned off his emotions. She would think he was a psycho. She’d leave him for certain. It was too much to ask anyone to accept.
He had to be careful. He’d already given her part of his past. She knew some of it. He could give her more. Talk about what happened to him. Talk about the assassination work for his government. He just needed to sidestep what he knew she couldn’t live with or handle right now. She was too overwhelmed. He’d work up to the worst—if he ever had to tell her.
Seychelle sat patiently while he paced back and forth like a feral animal. He felt like one. He could feel her eyes on him. Watching him. He glanced at her. Those eyes of hers. All blue. Serene. Not judging him. Seychelle never seemed to judge him. That brought him up short. He turned to face her. He judged himself. She didn’t judge him. He didn’t necessarily like the man he was. He didn’t even like the things he did. He thought they were necessary. No one stopped monsters. He had to do it because no one else did. That was the ugly truth. He accepted it and he did the job. He didn’t have to like it, he just did it. And those monsters needed to know what they did to those children they preyed on. How it felt before they left the world. Didn’t they? Scarlet had raised that question in his mind just recently. He always believed they should know.
He looked at Seychelle a long time. Drank her in. That beautiful, angelic face. Those little tiny scars no one else ever saw, but he did. They were his. She’d traded her life for his without hesitation. She’d given herself to him and she was more than willing to do so again, to walk through the fires of hell with him, live in hell, but he had to strip himself bare and let her see the real monster in order for her to agree.
“You’re shaking your head, Savage.” Her voice was gentle.
“Once I put this shit in your head, baby, there’s no getting it out.” He didn’t mean to, but he whispered the truth to her. He found himself on his knees in front of her, his arms around her thighs. “I tell you what you want to know, even a little bit, it never goes away. I don’t want that for you.”
Her blue eyes were steady, moving over his face with such love it made his heart ache. Her hand cupped the side of his face, her thumb sliding along his jaw just once, sending little darts of fire through him. Savage laid his head in her lap, finding her left leg with his hand. He needed the solace of the scars he could feel beneath the soft material. She’d sacrificed her perfect skin for him. Given him that. Maybe she could give him more. Maybe.
“You’re sure you want this, Seychelle? It could rip us apart. You knowing these things about me. They aren’t pretty. None of it’s pretty.”
“This is what can be the glue that holds us together for all time, Savage. You have to believe that. I have to know you inside and out. What and who you really are.”